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With trademark wit, Garagiola ends career

1991 Ford C. Frick Award recipient Joe Garagiola discusses his relationship with the D-backs, his retirement and his Hall of Fame career

By Steve Gilbert

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Joe Garagiola called it a career on Wednesday after 57 years in the broadcast booth.

At 87 years old, Garagiola displayed the trademark humor and speaking skills that propelled him into the National Baseball Hall of Fame as a broadcaster as he regaled the assembled media with stories from his illustrious career.

Garagiola broadcast on national network telecasts and for several teams following his retirement as a player in 1954, and he was a regular guest on "The Tonight Show" and a co-host of the "Today Show." Most recently, he had served as an occasional analyst on D-backs' television broadcasts.

Although he had surgery in 2009 to remove a brain tumor, Garagiola said that his health was not a factor in his decision to leave the broadcast booth. Instead it was a simply a matter of wanting to have more time for his wife, Audrey. The two have been married for 63 years.

"I've often said it's the best catch I ever made," Garagiola said of his wife. "The wife is the one who really makes it for you. She's the one who took care of the kids. I was the guy that was on the plane flying here, there, everywhere, coming home and telling her about it, and she'd just smile and say, 'That's great.'"

When Garagiola told D-backs president/CEO Derrick Hall that he wanted to meet with him on Dec. 7, Hall had a feeling something was up. It was, Hall said, the saddest day of his baseball career.

"It was a rather emotional meeting, for sure," Hall said. "But he's not going anywhere. He's still going to be around, he's still going to be at the ballpark, he's always going to be an important member of our family."

Garagiola's son, Joe Jr., was the team's first general manager, and he built the 2001 World Series championship team. Watching his son do that, Garagiola said, is his most cherished baseball memory.

"You guys took me into the family and made me feel like I was part of it at the beginning," he said. "I don't deserve a lot of things that have happened with me, but I remember Jack Benny saying he had arthritis and he didn't deserve that either."

That was just one of the funny lines from Garagiola. Here are a few others:

• Garagiola recently moved into a retirement community.

"You know what the most famous word in our place is?" he asked. "Huh?"

Garagiola's childhood friend Yogi Berra also recently moved into a retirement community.

"I said, 'How's it going, Yog?' And he said, 'It's all right, but geez they've got a lot of old people here.'"

• Traded to the New York Giants in 1954, Garagiola was behind the plate when the Cardinals' Stan Musial stepped up to it.

"This was the fourth team I was traded to when there was only eight in the league and that told me that I was either wanted, or modeling uniforms," Garagiola said. "I didn't know which. And the great Stan Musial comes up to hit, and apparently he didn't see the papers, so he taps the plate and he looks at me, and he backs out and says, 'What the heck are you doing there?' I said, 'I just got traded, Stan.' He said, 'You did, when?' I said, 'This morning.' He kind of looked stunned, and he said, 'Why don't you quit?' You know what I said to him? I said, 'Now?'"

• Speaking of a pitcher with a funky delivery, Garagiola said, "He threw nothing but elbows and fingernails at you, and pretty soon the ball came."

• While catching for a pitcher who only threw a fastball, Garagiola became confused when the pitcher kept shaking off the sign he was putting down. He finally went to the mound and asked the pitcher what was going on, and the pitcher told Garagiola that he wanted to throw a slider.

"I said, 'You don't have a slider.' He said, 'That's why I'll get him out, he won't be looking for it.'"

• When Garagiola became teary-eyed during the news conference, he looked toward manager Kirk Gibson in the crowd and said that if he couldn't hold it together, he was going to ask Gibson to come up and finish for him.